Education: Stratagems for Staying Solvent

Few schools can match the fiscal foresight of the law school of New York
University, which bought a New Jersey noodle factory in 1947 for $3.5
million. After receiving millions in profits over the years from the sale of
spaghetti and macaroni, the school sold the company for $115 million in
1976. That may be the only use of pasta to finance higher education, but
other novel strategies for coping with the fiscal crunch have yeasted up all
over. Among them:

Pawn the Library. Desperate to meet a payroll, the University of Miami
once...